Last year, I pretty much copped out on Christmas. Okay, maybe I didn’t cop out so much as I was given a pass considering I was ten months pregnant, plump as a honeybaked ham, and wound six ways to Sunday about giving birth during the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.™ I waddled to what holiday parties I could (contributing to the potluck whatever I hadn’t eaten on the drive over), but everything else–gifts, decorations, yuletide cheer–were mere ghosts of my usual seasonal spirit. (Think caroling in the shower and sporting socks with jingle bells.)

But oh, what a difference a year makes. This time it’s all about the baby: What does the baby want for Christmas? Will the baby be having his portrait taken with Santa? What will the baby think of the tree and the stockings and the ribbons and bows and…pumpkin carving? And then I think WAIT…he’s a baby! He has no idea what’s going on. I could take away his favorite book for a few days and then pull it out again with a grand flourish and it would be like Christmas and New Years and the Fourth of July all wrapped up together, except because he doesn’t know what any of those things are yet, to him it would just be Thursday.

Nonetheless, I feel compelled to make up for last year’s lackluster showing by handbaking and handmaking absolutely everything from the cookies to the tree skirt to the birthday party invitations, all in some twisted effort to outdo Christmas 2008, the year I handmade the gift of LIFE but absolutely nothing else. I love doing it, I really do, but that doesn’t mean I’m beyond feeling ruffled like a piece of ribbon candy whenever I take a step back and realize there’s just so much (self-inflicted, totally avoidable) stuff to do in the next few weeks.

And that’s when the magic word pops up: Balance. How do I find small moments of peace and quiet (or big moments of dancing on tabletops) to enjoy the season as an adult, as a spouse, as a friend, rather than solely as someone’s mother? So far the solution seems to be saying yes to any invitation to celebrate any occasion with any family, friend, or stranger who will have us. Throwing a holiday party within a fifty-mile radius of Oakland, California? We just might show up!

The best part about this is that it’s giving us a chance to practice the one very important parenting skill it’s taken us the better part of a year to learn: How to leave our child in someone else’s care for a few hours so we can go out and have a good time with each other. Christmas is for children, all right, but swanky holiday soirees that start past bedtime are definitely not. After an entire year of figuring out how to be Mom and Dad, we’re definitely ready to drop the baby with a sitter, don our party hats, and celebrate ourselves. Because sometimes Balance is hidden at the bottom of a glass of champagne.

What do you do during the holidays that’s just for you? Do you buy yourself a gift? Forgive yourself some of the usual day-to-day drudgery? Spend evenings by the fire with a book instead of hunched over your kid’s due-tomorrow science project? Pool resources with friends to get a babysitter who will watch everyone’s children while you go watch the ball drop in Times Square?